Mr. And Miss Anonymous Read Online Free PDF Page B

glasses.
    From time to time when she parked her car in her driveway, Lily would stop and look at her house. She would marvel at how far she’d come in life, from the ramshackle house she’d lived in with her grandmother to this historical house that she had restored. A house that was far too big for one person. Oh, she had a housekeeper and a gardener, but they went home at five o’clock. It was a house that begged for children and pets, not a young single woman who rarely got home before nine at night and left at six in the morning.
    Lily pressed the code to the gate in her walled-off courtyard. The solar lights guided her toward the kitchen, which was awash in light. In fact, every light and every television set was on inside the house, something she insisted on. She hated coming home to darkness and silence.
    Lily set her shopping bags on the counter and poured herself a glass of wine that she carried out to the courtyard, where she settled herself in a comfortable cushioned glider. She leaned back and closed her eyes, but she couldn’t turn off her mind.
    If only…if only…
    Lily woke a little past midnight bathed in sweat. The damn dream again. She dropped her head into her hands and started to cry. It was always the same dream: children, dozens of them, dressed in clothing she’d designed, and who looked just like her at their age, picketing with faceless parents outside Sandcastle headquarters. Everyone was screaming and shouting, but she could never make out what they were saying. Until a week ago—when she had the dream again, and the words were so crystal clear it felt like they were burned into her brain just the way they were minutes ago when she woke.
    Lily choked on her own sobs as she struggled to get herself together. The words— “See, see, it is a big deal” —wrapped themselves around her very soul.
    What a fool she’d been. She knew she was still being a fool to think Peter Kelly could help her. First, she needed to help herself. She needed to talk to someone, to try and unload the guilt she’d been carrying around for so long. At the very least she needed a professional to help her come to terms with what she considered “Lily’s folly” so many years ago.
    Lily was stiff from the damp air. She picked up her empty wineglass and made her way into the house, where she climbed the stairs to the second floor to take a shower. She knew there would be no more sleep for her that night, so she might as well pack and get things ready for her early-morning trip to the airport.
    The image in the bathroom mirror startled her until she remembered her makeover just hours ago. “The new me,” she mumbled as she stepped into the shower. This new me is going to turn her life around or die trying. With that promise, her spirits lifted. Maybe, just maybe, she would finally be able to get a handle on her life.
    Fifteen minutes later, a luxurious towel wrapped around her, Lily padded out to her bedroom to look at what Olga called her “traveling attire.” She stared at the pale green linen suit with matching sandals and winced. Linen? How had she allowed Olga to talk her into linen? She’d be one wrinkled mess before she even got to the airport in Charleston. She hung the suit in the spacious closet as she moved hangers this way and that. She finally chose a pair of off-white capri pants with a matching top. She rummaged through her shoe rack until she found a comfortable pair of straw sandals for the trek through the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, where she had a layover.
    She just needed one more thing. Her old hat, the one she’d been wearing when she had first met Pak/Peter Kelly. He’d even commented on it. Said he liked it. How weird was it that she would remember a detail like that after all these years?
    In the dressing room off her bedroom, there were shelves and shelves filled with head busts wearing hats. All from back when she first thought she wanted to be a hat designer.